To ask what you think of SAHMs?

[HarryHarryHarry]

For the past 3 years I have been a SAHM. I never imagined that I would be one but I actually quite like it. Eventually I plan to go back to work but it could be that I just work unskilled-type jobs instead of having a proper career. I really don’t know what my options will be when the time comes. I might just stay home and focus on my writing, which is my real passion, or I might go back to university and retrain in something. (We are lucky that we can currently afford to get by on just one parent’s wages). Recently though I have been wondering what my children will think of me when they’re older. Especially my daughter. Am I a bad example to her?

If your mum was a SAHM, did you have any thoughts about that?

Saying “ I would be ok if he fucked off” essentially stems from the fact that he earns a lot of money and has not been a dick about sharing it. What that would look like moving forward should you divorce who knows but I don’t think the majority of SAHMs are so financially comfortable. I would be surprised if the majority of SAHMs had their own private pension for example. Not that at means you should be working... I don’t mean that but you must see how privileged your position is.

My response was to the comment from Handbags seemingly telling my husband what to call his money and suggesting SAHM's don't respect their husbands earnings.

Of course I'm aware that I'm in a privileged position.
Just like the working poster up thread who has assets, savings and enough earning potential for there not to be much of an impact if the marriage were to break down, unlike in the realms of MN high earning is not the norm.
Most working families I know have stretched themselves to get high mortgages and have pretty much reached their earning potential. If their marriages broke down there would be significant change of lifestyle for both parties.

@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously

Every day's a school day. I now completely see that my children will be screwed over in life because I couldn't quote the Equalities Act to them

Wrt pensions, as important as they are, lots of people have worked hard and paid into them over the years and been utterly screwed over at retirement age. I think it would do us all good to know more about them, the benefits and potential dangers. I know I'm not as knowledgeable here as I should be. So far I've been overpaying the mortgage so that the house is an asset and trying to build savings now that we don't have the debt that younger people might have.

Your partner can pay max £2,880 a year into your pension and you will receive tax relief on it into your pension. So if you (or your partner/parent/anyone) pays in £2,880 you will receive a total of £3,600

Tax relief if you’re a non-taxpayer
If you have no earnings or earn less than £3,600 a year, you can still pay into a pension scheme and qualify to have tax relief added to your contributions up to a certain amount.

This applies if you pay into a personal or stakeholder pension yourself (so not through an employer’s scheme) and with some workplace pension schemes – but not all. The way some workplace pension schemes give tax relief mean that people earning less than the personal allowance (£12,500 in the 2020-21 tax year) won’t get tax relief (this arrangement is Net Pay).

Relief at source means your contributions are taken from your net pay (after your wages are taxed). Then we (or any other pension provider) automatically claim tax relief for you from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), adding the basic tax rate of 20% to your pension contributions.

You’d get the basic 20% rate in tax relief added to your pension savings, even if you don’t actually pay tax (for example, even if you earn less than the standard personal allowance of £12,500 a year for the 2020/21 tax year).
If you pay a higher rate of tax, you can claim the extra tax relief back from HMRC in your tax return.
The alternative is a net pay arrangement - the one to avoid if you earn under £12,500 but great for those in the higher tax bracket!

Most working families I know have stretched themselves to get high mortgages and have pretty much reached their earning potential. If their marriages broke down there would be significant change of lifestyle for both parties

I know three (working) women who have had marriage/relationship problems and have told me that they can’t leave because they would struggle financially. Obviously there will be sahm in the same position

(I think two of them have sorted the relationship out so thats a positive)

But i agree if you have a good, well paid job its easier to leave if you need to, the handful of divorced women i know all had well paid and pensionable jobs with pay in the high 20’s or into the 30’s

(And i know a few ex husband’s who completely screwed over their wives...but again it made a difference whether the women were in well paid jobs, the women who were low paid full time or part time or sahm struggled)

@Kottbullar

Hope you didn’t think I was digging you out - I really wasn’t. I’m a part time worker - 75% of full time hours. I reduce my hours for the school holidays and I appreciate that flexibility. If I got divorced I could increase my hours to full time easily enough but my pension will still not be where my DHs will be ( same organisation). I’m fortunate that my pension is pretty good generally speaking though. Someone can be employed but in a very part time capacity ( to fit around school hours) who is equally up shit creek if the unimaginable were to happen. The power sits with the money ultimately. The truly safest option is to both work an equal amount of hours outside the home and inside the home ( assuming roughly equal salaries) but life isn’t always that convenient. I, like you take a gamble that going part-time doesn’t screw me over down the line.

Thank you Silver.

@TarnishedSilver

A lack of confidence can definitely inhibit returning to work as a SAHM, and I’ve always felt there’s so much more that can be done - by women themselves and by other organisations - to keep women connected with their professional skills, even their ability to recall the minutiae of their former jobs, how they excelled at them, and how they demonstrate key competence requirements in interview.

I think a lack of confidence is an inhibitor to returning to work but I would also strongly point out people who bang on about how the workplace has changed beyond all recognition and you'll be completely out of your depth. As a sahm - you still co-exist and interact with humans, you maintain relationships with all sorts of professional bodies - you are aware of changes in the world, most of us read the news - if you were computer literate before pregnancy it's likely that you continued to use software programs/social media/word maybe even a bit of excel - with a basic grounding you can update these skills (you tube) pretty easily. Beyond MS products all companies use different software products - any new employee will have to learn these.

I also think the above attitude contributes to prejudice against SAHMs when they return to work - as if they are bloody useless and should be thrown on the scrap heap - it's bullshit. And if you are contributing to this prejudice shame on you!

We employ two women who were both SAHM - both professional and very talented women who stepped away from work to care for their kids. They returned to part-time work through us - through my experience, dh and I believe in helping woman return to work (not an entirely selfless act) one of them is so bloody talented that even after taking 8 years off work - she jumped back in again - to a highly technical and ever changing industry and was within a few weeks twice as productive as anyone else on the team - the team are brilliant but she is something else - what kind of dumb-assed employer would reject someone like her for taking 8 years off and wanting to return part -time (we'd her full time in an instant!)
It's time we stopped being so bloody stupid about woman returning to work - stop discriminating against them when they wish to do what you all have been telling them they should do - be part of the solution.

This is an excellent post! One of my best employees was out of the workplace for 20 years but crikey she did the work and research for her interview. Started off in a NMW job and is climbing the ladder super quick! One thing I hear is women putting themselves down - stop it !

“One thing I hear is women putting themselves down - stop it !”

Exactly!

A lot of women I know have been SAHMs and the simple reason for this is the family finances are such that they don’t need a salary, either now or in the future. They have access to the kind of money where they are set up for life, in other words and so are the DC. So they have no intention of going back full-on into the corporate world (if they were ever in it to begin with). Even the DH’s are stepping back by their late 40s and focusing on making the money they have made work for them (often through banking bonuses they have received over the years or a sale of a company). It’s not about “salary” for these people and never really was. They invest in all sorts and take dividends - often the investments are in the wife’s name for tax purposes. Or they have properties as a form of pension. There is quite a lot to manage with all this and the wife often is very involved. It’s never as simple as “his” and “her” money. They invest in the children’s names for inheritance tax purposes. These women are not daft, trust me on that. I know this kind of set up is not exactly the norm in the U.K., but then families with a SAHM are hardly the norm either these days.

So when people on here are running down SAHMs, there’s a very good chance that their ‘advice’ is falling on -

a) a woman who can’t afford to work because she can’t afford childcare
b) a woman who can’t work because of illness or one of her children has SEN

(In which case all the ‘SAHMs are useless / lazy blah blah rhetoric is wholly insensitive)

or

c) women who are taking a few years out and know exactly what she is doing, thankyou very much

or

d) women in very wealthy families, for whom, the idea if some daft busybody know-all woman in middle management who thinks she the be-all-and-end-all is, quite frankly, an utter joke.

I know three (working) women who have had marriage/relationship problems and have told me that they can’t leave because they would struggle financially. Obviously there will be sahm in the same position

DH has had several friends in similar positions. Mostly self employed tradesmen who've worked reduced hours to fit in with the kids, their wives have decent steady incomes.
He also has a friend who has been completely screwed financially by his ex SAHM partner.

Life isn't one size fits all.

@Sorayo

“One thing I hear is women putting themselves down - stop it !”

Exactly!

A lot of women I know have been SAHMs and the simple reason for this is the family finances are such that they don’t need a salary, either now or in the future. They have access to the kind of money where they are set up for life, in other words and so are the DC. So they have no intention of going back full-on into the corporate world (if they were ever in it to begin with). Even the DH’s are stepping back by their late 40s and focusing on making the money they have made work for them (often through banking bonuses they have received over the years or a sale of a company). It’s not about “salary” for these people and never really was. They invest in all sorts and take dividends - often the investments are in the wife’s name for tax purposes. Or they have properties as a form of pension. There is quite a lot to manage with all this and the wife often is very involved. It’s never as simple as “his” and “her” money. They invest in the children’s names for inheritance tax purposes. These women are not daft, trust me on that. I know this kind of set up is not exactly the norm in the U.K., but then families with a SAHM are hardly the norm either these days.

So when people on here are running down SAHMs, there’s a very good chance that their ‘advice’ is falling on -

a) a woman who can’t afford to work because she can’t afford childcare
b) a woman who can’t work because of illness or one of her children has SEN

(In which case all the ‘SAHMs are useless / lazy blah blah rhetoric is wholly insensitive)

or

c) women who are taking a few years out and know exactly what she is doing, thankyou very much

or

d) women in very wealthy families, for whom, the idea if some daft busybody know-all woman in middle management who thinks she the be-all-and-end-all is, quite frankly, an utter joke.

On point a) women who do not have a career and see no or very limited opportunities for career progression, so stepping out of the workplace, because their wage does not cover childcare, will have little impact on their future employability - at minimum wage. A lot of the discussions on here, the advice from many, assumes everyone has a fulfilling career with lots of opportunity of advancement, with very little appreciation of the fact that not everyone can have a fulfilling career - society is simply not set up that way.

Life isn't one size fits all.

Perfect. All that needs to be said really.

Thanks @Divebar

The truly safest option is to both work an equal amount of hours outside the home and inside the home ( assuming roughly equal salaries) but life isn’t always that convenient.
I agree with this and I've noticed far more couples seem to have this balance now than they did when I had my first DC which can only be a good thing.

@Sorayo

So when people on here are running down SAHMs, there’s a very good chance that their ‘advice’ is falling on -

a) a woman who can’t afford to work because she can’t afford childcare
b) a woman who can’t work because of illness or one of her children has SEN

(In which case all the ‘SAHMs are useless / lazy blah blah rhetoric is wholly insensitive)

or

c) women who are taking a few years out and know exactly what she is doing, thankyou very much

or

d) women in very wealthy families, for whom, the idea if some daft busybody know-all woman in middle management who thinks she the be-all-and-end-all is, quite frankly, an utter joke.

Yes to all
Especially “d”

Some of these “ d “ women need to give themselves a reality check never mind doling what they think constitutes one to a SAHM via an online debate.

I don’t think many people are running them down - just bemused by the choice. SAHMs are (on the whole) making themselves (and by extension) their children vulnerable to the goodwill of their husband to keep paying. Myself and many other posters find the decision to do that foolish and not a very good gamble to take.

Separately I do think that it is not a great role model for their kids - daughters especially. Work hard at school girls to achieve but then sideline all your aspiration/ hard work to become reliant on a man. Definitely not the message I’m passing on to my daughter.

I will be honest too and think its a waste of women's education and career investment pre kids. I would hate to leave myself that potentially vulnerable if anything happened to my husand or our relationship. And I value having my own income and the knowledge I dont need a man to support me.

That said, my kids under 10 would value me spending less time on work calls.

@Holyrivolli

I don’t think many people are running them down - just bemused by the choice. SAHMs are (on the whole) making themselves (and by extension) their children vulnerable to the goodwill of their husband to keep paying. Myself and many other posters find the decision to do that foolish and not a very good gamble to take.

Separately I do think that it is not a great role model for their kids - daughters especially. Work hard at school girls to achieve but then sideline all your aspiration/ hard work to become reliant on a man. Definitely not the message I’m passing on to my daughter.

I'm bemused by your post tbh. How is owning half the family assets vulnerable? Plenty of woh women shafted during divorce and probably a more expensive lifestyle to lose.

What makes you think you need a job to be a good role model for a daughter.
What makes you think a sahm is reliant on a man.
Most men are reliant on their wives because they are pretty useless.
Personally, I don't like the message you are giving to your daughter.
But of course, your life, your choice.
There's more than one way to live, pushing a particular theory of your own onto your children is never a good thing.
They feel as though they have to live up to your ideal, and can't choose their own, this is

I don’t think many people are running them down - just bemused by the choice.
There's plenty of running down on all threads on this topic. The charming stay at home leeches and, I'm paraphrasing here, live in prostitutes spring to mind.

Also the faux bemusement, it must be a difficult life if your bewildered by every human you encounter who isn't exactly the same as you.

Gah! *you're

Education is never a waste. Anyone who thinks it has no value unless being directly used to generate money must live in a cultural wasteland.

I'm really appreciating mine since the schools closed.

@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously

Education is never a waste. Anyone who thinks it has no value unless being directly used to generate money must live in a cultural wasteland.

I'm really appreciating mine since the schools closed.

I completely agree.

I will absolutely teach my daughter (and son ) that it is so important to be financially independent and that it is risky to rely on the ongoing benevolence of another person to be able to keep a roof over their heads, pay the bills and ensure they don’t live in penury in old age. They don’t probably need me to tell them this obvious statement as they have seen in their own circles how vulnerable not working can make people. If others chose to take a huge leap of faith and trust that their other half will continue to support them come what may then that’s totally up to them.

@Firenight

I will be honest too and think its a waste of women's education and career investment pre kids. I would hate to leave myself that potentially vulnerable if anything happened to my husand or our relationship. And I value having my own income and the knowledge I dont need a man to support me.

That said, my kids under 10 would value me spending less time on work calls.

You sound like my teens say that learning about Shakespeare is a waste of time because they'd never use it directly in a job... What do you tell your kids? - the only things worth learning are things that will result in an addition to your bank account? Or maybe they are for you?

A basic level of education is essential for everyone to engage with the world and learning should be lifelong but spending x years and x thousands of pounds doing a degree in a specialised subject to then chuck it all away to run after your kids and play full time housekeeper is a waste.

A basic level of education is essential for everyone to engage with the world and learning should be lifelong but spending x years and x thousands of pounds doing a degree in a specialised subject to then chuck it all away to run after your kids and play full time housekeeper is a waste

It's really not. For you maybe. But I love the fact I can now deal Japanese thank to my "wasted" uni degree. It means if I need I can expand on what work I could potentially do from home.

Your view point is incredibly narrow, naive, and restricted. Just because someone has a uni degree and hapoens to find themselves/decide to be a sahp, doesn't mean it can't be used. Women. Are. Smart. Most humans are. Becoming a sahp doesn't suddenly make us stupid, it makes us resourceful . It saddens me that a fellow woman just assumes, like many men do, a women with a uni degree automatically becomes stupid and "wastes" what she's been to uni for just because she set us home and looks after children etc. No one would ever say that to a man. Just because we are female doesn't mean we are stupid- shock horror, but we are smart enough to utilise our education (or life experience! University is not the be all and end all of everything) to our advantage, whether at home or not. But I .ca see my misogynists might think otherwise, I mean, you already believe women are only valid in certain roles, I don't expect you to understand we don't automatically lose all semblance of self or mind as soon as we choose/have no choice over being a sahp.

Edit: many spelling mistakes, my phone has a tough case which makes it hard to type 😁

@Holyrivolli

A basic level of education is essential for everyone to engage with the world and learning should be lifelong but spending x years and x thousands of pounds doing a degree in a specialised subject to then chuck it all away to run after your kids and play full time housekeeper is a waste.

Maybe for you, I cant say that education is ever wasted, and we have kids to care for them, to run after them. Why else would you want to have kids We have to keep our homes clean otherwise we'd live in squalor. But that's some other woman's job, that women pay a pittance to do for them. Do you think this is all what somebody who doesn't work chooses to do , really? Do you not see them living a satisfying life, free from constraints of work. This is such a narrow way of thinking, perhaps those with a specialised degree have found a way of using their education away from a workplace.